France: the unlikely return to UN peacekeeping

ABSTRACT

French policy towards UN peacekeeping reflects the ambivalence of what France wants to achieve in the field of conflict management and through which institutional frameworks it prefers to work. On the one hand, France is greatly involved in the design and decision-making process of contemporary UN-led peacekeeping operations. On the other hand, after having been present in the field during the early 1990s, France underwent a major policy shift that led it to distance itself from UN operations. This chapter offers a narrative of French policy and perceptions vis-à-vis the virtues and limits of UN peacekeeping operations in the twenty-first century. It examines the French level of contributions, decision-making process, motivations and lessons learnt from past and current operations. It also analyses the dichotomy between the political role that France plays at the Security Council and its absence from UN-led operations. It seeks to determine how coherent this dichotomy is, its rationale, and how likely – and under what conditions – it will change in the near future, in particular through a hypothetical French return to UN-led peacekeeping operations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

About the author

Thierry Tardy is a Senior Analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies. His latest book publications include the Oxford Handbook on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (Oxford University Press, edited with J. Koops, N. MacQueen and P.D. Williams, 2015) and Peacekeeping in Africa. The Evolving Security Architecture (Routledge, edited with M. Wyss, 2014). He teaches on crisis management issues at Science Po (Paris), the Sorbonne and the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO), and is a regular speaker at the NATO Defense College and at the European Security and Defence College.

Notes

1 Gilligan and Stedman, “Where Do the Peacekeepers Go?”

2 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeeper.

3 Andersson, “Democracies and UN Peacekeeping Operations, 1990-1996.”

4 “Summary of Contributions to Peacekeeping Operations by Countries as of 31 May 1993.”

5 Tardy, “United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

6 France lost 70 soldiers in Bosnia and Herzegovina and had between 600 and 700 wounded. See Testimony of Alain Juppé and of François Léotard in Srebrenica: rapport sur un massacre, 103 and 256, respectively.

7 Brunborg and Urdal, “Report on the Number of Missing and Dead from Srebrenica.”

8 The Joint Concept on the Employment of Armed Force defines five principles of military action: freedom of action, concentration of effort, economy of resources, surprise, controlled use of force; see Joint Concept on the Employment of Armed Force, 28–30.

9 See “Enseignemants Tactiques. Les opérations terrestres de l’armée de terre des années 90 – Témoignages,” 37–8.

10 Interviews of the author with French senior officers between 1994 and 1997. See also Tardy, La France et la gestion des conflits yougoslaves (1991-1995).

11 See ‘Doctrine Lanxade’; “French Aide-memoire to the UN Secretary-General’s Supplement to the Agenda for Peace”; Srebrenica: rapport sur un massacre … 

12 Utley, “A Means to Wider Ends? France, Germany and Peacekeeping,” 66–7.

13 White Paper on Defence, 75–6.

14 See ‘Doctrine Lanxade’. The same approach is expressed in the French Aide-memoire to the UN Secretary-General’s Supplement to the Agenda for Peace, as well as in the Parliamentary report on Rwanda (Brana and Cazeneuve).

15 “Rapport d’information sur les opérations militaires … ”

16 In June 1995, following numerous Blue Helmets being taken hostage in several places in Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands assembled a multinational force mandated by the Security Council to protect UNPROFOR, principally around Sarajevo.

17 All figures given in the following pages and tables come from the UN website.

18 See “UN Mission’s Summary Detailed by Country,” 30 Apr. 2004.

19 “UN Mission’s Summary Detailed by Country,” 30 Aug. 2006; “UN Mission’s Summary Detailed by Country,” 30 Sept. 2006; “UN Mission’s Summary Detailed by Country,” 30 Sept. 2008.

20 From Mar. 2008 to Mar. 2009, the EU deployed a UN-mandated military mission in Chad and CAR as a bridging operation before the UN took over in Mar. 2009 with MINURCAT 2.

21 MINURSO in Western Sahara; MONUC/MONUSCO in the DRC; UNMEE in Ethiopia; UNMIL in Liberia; UNOMIG in Georgia; UNTSO in Israel; UNAMID in Sudan (Darfur); MINUSTAH in Haiti; and UNMIK in Kosovo.

22 See remarks by France at the Security Council’s debate on peacekeeping, S/PV.6603, 26 Aug. 2011, 12; Bonne, “Western States and UN Peacekeeping,” 46.

23 In 2014, France was mainly involved in five UN-mandated but not UN-led peacekeeping missions: Central African Republic (approx. 2,200 personnel in Sangaris + 160 in EUFOR RCA); Afghanistan (approx. 650 personnel in ISAF); Kosovo (approx. 100 in KFOR); Côte d’Ivoire (approx. 770 in Licorne); and the Gulf of Aden (approx. 200 in Atalanta). See Report on Defense (2014), 25.

24 The NATO operations in Libya and Afghanistan and operation Barkhane in Mali do not qualify as peacekeeping operations.

25 However, UNSC Res. 2164 (2014) ‘Authorizes French forces, within the limits of their capacities and areas of deployment, to use all necessary means […] to intervene in support of elements of MINUSMA when under imminent and serious threat upon request of the Secretary-General’ (para. 26).

26 Data collected by the author in 2010–14 in the context of a research project on France and the UK at the UN Security Council (2014).

27 See Thakur and Malone, “Tribes Within the UN”; Cunliffe, Legions of Peace, 241–4.

28 See Adebajo, Building Peace in West Africa, 31; Gberie and Addo, Challenges of Peace Implementation in Cote d’Ivoire; The Economist, “Colonial Baggage.”

29 See Brosig, Cooperative Peacekeeping in Africa, 148; Koepf, “The Problems of French-Led Peace Operations.”

30 Cunliffe, Legions of Peace, 242.

31 Interestingly enough, operation Barkhane that took over operation Serval in Mali on 1 Aug. 2014 did not lead to a debate at the Parliament for the reason that it is not considered as a ‘new operation’.

32 See Pellégrini, Un été de feu au Liban, 131–4; Gowan and Novosseloff, “Le renforcement de la Force intérimaire des Nations Unies au Liban.”

33 White Paper on National Defence and Security (2008), 114–16.

34 UN Mission’s Summary detailed by Country, 30 June 2015.

35 Karlsrud and Smith, “European Military Participation in MINUSMA.”

36 “Leaders’ Summit Pledges 40,000 New UN Peacekeepers.”

37 “Uniting Our Strengths for Peace – Politics, Partnership and People,” para. 199.

38 Ministry of Defence, France, French White Paper 2013, 31.

39 Bonne, “Western States,” 49.

40 CICDE 2013, 10.

41 Chauveau and Gaymard, “Engagement et diplomatie,” 11–12.

42 Fromion and Rouillard, “L’évolution du dispositif militaire français en Afrique et sur le suivi des opérations en cours.”

43 “Report of the High-Level Independent Panel … ,” paras. 35 and 115.